P.L.O. 'Exodus' Ferry Faces a Sea of Trouble

By ALAN COWELL, Special to the New York Times

Published: February 17, 1988

LIMASSOL, Cyprus, Feb. 16—
The Sol Phryne lay at rest today, a ship of a certain age and an opaque past. A sign on the gaping mouth of the ferry's car deck announced, belatedly, ''No visitors.''

Until early Monday, the ferry was, apparently unbeknown to its crew and its skipper, to have become the Palestine Liberation Organization's ''ship of return'' carrying Palestinian deportees to the Israeli port of Haifa. But someone blew a hole in the ferry's crusted hull and snatched the unsought glory away.

Capt. Cleanthis Vlahopoulos said it would take ''at least 20 days'' to repair the damage, if a dry dock could be found, and the nearest dry dock, according to port officials here, is in Haifa, of all places. Derring-do and Back Pay

The sabotage Monday does not seem to have been the vessel's only brush with derring-do.

After it was built in Japan in 1947, ''it was used for some military purpose,'' Captain Vlahopoulous said, grasping at amber worry beads. It sailed the Greek islands awhile, from 1967 to 1974, before it changed hands and started the east Mediterranean run, carrying pilgrims to Haifa and, in 1982, evacuating Palestinian guerrillas from Beirut.

But the hardest times came last year, the captain said, after the seasonal runs to Haifa with pilgrims to Israel aboard. Debts had mounted and the crew members had not been paid, some of them, he said, ''for 12 months, 18 months.'' So the boat was impounded and the crew stayed on, awaiting their money, all 75 of them - Egyptians, Filipinos, Ghanaians, Sudanese, Britons and Cypriots. 'Starving Family to Feed'

On Monday, after the sabotage, when journalists first got to the boat, a Filipino crewman hoisted a placard to show them. ''Starving family to feed,'' it said. Some crew members had thought that salvation was on the way with news of the purchase of the boat for $600,000 last Saturday by a little-known shipping company called Karpathos, but those hopes have not been redeemed.

''I want my money, and I want it now,'' said an Egyptian crewman, who called himself Arabi, on the breakwater by the Sol Phryne today. ''I want my money, too, so I can leave,'' said his friend, who gave his name as Gabr.

The boat was sabotaged less than 24 hours after three leading P.L.O. military officials were killed by a remote-controlled car bomb at the other end of Limassol's waterfront from the Sol Phryne's berth. Friends and relatives of the dead gathered there today to piece together what had happened, and to show some defiance.

''We shall resist until our homeland is free!'' a woman cried in the crowded living room where the story was retold. A Reluctant Battlefield

The senior P.L.O. figure among the victims, identified as Col. Marwan Ibrahim Kayyali, had called home to tell his wife to expect guests for a meal, said a Lebanese relative, who declined to be identified by name.

As the Volkswagen loaded with P.L.O. commanders drove up a concrete ramp in front of the colonel's apartment building, the bomb went off, apparently underneath the driver's seat, and set the car ablaze.

The twin explosions have renewed Cyprus's image as a Middle East battlefield, cast in that role despite its own refusal to play it. A bomb exploded in the Israeli Embassy here in 1984; no one was wounded in the blast, which was claimed by a Palestinian faction. In September 1985, three Israelis were killed aboard a private yacht, and that November, the Iraqi Airways office manager was slain by a car bomb. In August 1986, guerrillas attacked a British air base with mortars and rockets.

''In this place you've got an Israeli Embassy and a P.L.O. office,'' a Western diplomat said. ''There is a remarkably wide range of the Middle East spectrum here.''

But people in this resort appeared unruffled by the latest attacks. ''They don't see terrorism affecting them directly,'' the diplomat said. ''It's someone else's problem that's spilled onto their turf.''